[media-credit name=” Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post)” align=”alignnone” width=”495″][/media-credit] House Speaker Mark Ferrandino says goodbye to his partner, Greg Wertsch, following a vote on a bill allowing gay couples to form civil unions. The photo of the gay couple kissing, which ran on the cover of today’s Denver Post, has generated plenty of criticism, but also applause.

A front-page photograph in the Denver Post of House Speaker Mark Ferrandino kissing his partner has painted a thousand words all right, delivered via phone calls, e-mails, letters and tweets.

A sample:

Robert, from Bennet: What gives the Denver Post the right not only to print the pornographic picture on the front page of the paper, and then send it to my HOME AND MY FAMILY? … If I get one more piece of filth like that sent to me by the Denver Post, I will personally come down to the Post and in no uncertain term see to it that it stops.

Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet and Republican Rep. Cory Gardner tour Northern Colorado businesses together in 2011. In recent partisanship rankings, Gardner is among the most conservative House members and Bennet is among the most moderate Senate members.

WASHINGTON — New rankings on partisanship among members of Congress puts Rep. Cory Gardner among the most conservative members in the U.S. House of Representatives and Sen. Michael Bennet as among the most moderate senators.

In its annual rankings that evaluate votes over the past year, the National Journal ranked Gardner, a Republican from Yuma, as 10th most conservative member in the House.

Bennet, a Democrat elected in 2010, is the 45th most liberal member in the Senate. His Democratic colleague Sen. Mark Udall is the 39th most liberal, according to the National Journal Senate rankings.

Bennet’s ranking comes from votes cast last year — before he took over one of the fundraising arms of the Democratic party as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Denver City Council members in a committee meeting on Wednesday morning heard public comment, queried Denver Public Schools officials and pieced through information about a controversial land swap in southeast Denver before sending the matter forward for a vote of the entire council.

The committee voted 4-1 with one member abstaining to move the bill to the full council, which is expected to cast a final vote on the matter on April 1 after a one-hour public hearing. The bill would approve the swap, giving DPS 11.5 acres of city-owned property to build a school in exchange for a 46,000-square-foot downtown school building that would become a domestic violence resource center.

The crux of the controversy is over the 11.5 acres of undeveloped city land north of Cherry Creek Reservoir. For six years the parcel had been designated a natural area, part of the Cherry Creek Trail. Formally called the Hampden Heights Open Space but also known as Hentzell Park, the piece of land is beloved by parks advocates who cried foul when Denver’s Parks and Recreation Manager Lauri Dannemmiller in January removed the designation in preparation of the swap.

“This is a bad decision and bad policy,” said Dave Felice, an opponent to the swap who spoke at the committee meeting. “This is administrative theft of public property. The city cannot give up rare and irreplaceable natural areas.”Read more…

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Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.